U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,608 is directed to a method of and an apparatus for moving a mass located in a track and moving the track itself to provide for acceleration or deceleration of the mass as it moves in and is projected out of such track. U.S. Pat. No. 6,014,964 is an improvement of the invention disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,608 and utilizes a track having a spiral path. A mass located in the spiral track is moved by moving a portion of the spiral path where the mass is located substantially radially along a local radius of curvature of the spiral path. The mass may be accelerated by gyrating the spiral path at a constant frequency as the mass moves outwardly in the spiral path. The disclosures of each of the above-identified prior art patents are incorporated herein by reference.
Additional prior art, documented in numerous textbooks (engineering, physics and mathematics), also show other methods of accelerating a mass by rotational techniques. These public disclosures are also recognized. These techniques include the use of gears, belts, fixed and moveable structures, and non-contacting electromagnetic forcing functions.